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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic building had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”